John Ritenbaugh, emphasizing that God continually uses perennial types, patterns, and examples, indicates that humankind, nature, and Satan (including his demonic legions) have been mortally impacted by sin, and that the entirety of nature awaits redemption through the appearance of God's offspring. Nature has become a slave of death and decay after the sin of Adam and Eve, whose offspring have been forced to share a prison cell with demonic forces, subject to a death penalty imposed as a consequence of sin. Neither Satan nor his demons cause us to sin; we chose to sin, and we die as the result of our own sins. We were created upright, but bring on judgments by ourselves; the judgments reveal we are still accountable. The same Creator God who placed judgment on Adam and Eve is still on His throne. Thankfully, as offspring of Adam and Eve, we reap the benefit of the curse placed on the serpent, but we must also endure hardship of pain and suffering in our sanctification process. We learn that as we sin, we impact all people; sin is never committed in a vacuum. Thankfully, God has given us gifts, skills, and abilities to enable us to accomplish our responsibilities. Ironically, the original sin revolved around food; all of the Holy Days focus on food, including the Day of Atonement where fasting automatically carries our minds to food. We live in our ancestors, in the sense that Levi paid tithes through Abraham while still in his loins.. We are all subject to the consequences of sin brought about by our first parents. The Edenic covenant was a radiant picture of joy and hope; we are all subject to the consequences of the failure of our parents to keep their part of the agreement. Like Adam and Eve, we are responsible for our part of the covenant. Everything, including ourselves, wears down by God's design, but those whom God has called out have been given a glimpse and hope of a glorious pain-free future.

The common belief among Christians—and other religions have similar depictions of the afterlife—is that one's immortal soul goes either to heaven or hell after death. David Grabbe argues that this ignores the biblical concept of the second death, an event beyond physical death that not only undermines the traditional heaven-hell and immortal soul doctrines, but also highlights God's perfect sense of justice.

Richard Ritenbaugh, refuting the Pagan oriented concept of Hell reinforced by Dante's Inferno, laments that most of mainline Protestant and Catholic theology is hopelessly immersed in this false concept. The Hebrew word sheol simply means a pit or a hole where dead bodies are placed. Errant connotations evolved from this, including a void and a haunting, mysterious place, influenced by Greek myths of Hades. Realistically, when a body goes to sheol, it corrupts and is broken down by bacteria. Often, translators render the Hebrew word sheol (the pit) into the English word Hell (connoting flames and pitchforks). Jonah referred to the belly of the fish as sheol. In the Greek language, Hades is equivalent to the Hebrew word sheol, without any reference to flames or torment. When Christ went into the tomb, He was in Hades, the storage place of the dead. Hades and death are equivalent terms. The term tartaroo refers to a place or condition of restraint for fallen angels or demons, not humans. The Bottomless Pit was reserved for Satan, symbolized as a fiery dragon. The term Gehenna (of Hinnom), referring to the valley of the sons of Hinnom, was actually a place of refuse, at one time used for child sacrifice. It was consecrated by God as a burial ground, and later the city dump of Jerusalem, with a fire burning the trash. Jesus used this venue as a symbol of the Lake of Fire—eternal Judgment (where the trash and garbage are burned up.) When one dies, the body decomposes and consciousness ceases; the spirit (the record of our life experiences) goes to God for safe keeping. When Christ returns, He will resurrect those who have believed and eventually all either to life or condemnation (depicted in Malachi 4:1-3). The soul is not immortal; the soul that sins shall die; the wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life for those called by God.

David Grabbe, reminding us that the majority of nominal Christianity has bought into Satan's lie to Eve that she would not die, perpetuating this systematized delusion through the doctrines of the immortal soul, with its eventual departure to Heaven, an ever-burning hell, purgatory, or limbo. Man does not have a soul; he is a soul, subject to permanent oblivion unless rescued by Jesus Christ. The wages of sin is death, not life in ever-burning hell, or a stroll through the Pearly Gates. For those who have submitted their lives to God, turning their lives around in repentance, and sealed with God's Holy Spirit, there is no fear of the Second Death. They will be resurrected when Christ returns. Death has both a physical application (which all of us will experience) and a spiritual application (meted out on those who absolutely will not yield to Almighty God under any circumstances, having committed the unpardonable sin, any sin harbored in perpetuity and not repented of). With Adam and Eve's sin, the union between God and man was severed. Through Jesus Christ, the second Adam, access to the God the Father has been restored, and Eternal Life has been granted as a precious gift to those who submit and yield to God, having their characters shaped and molded into His image.

The narrative of King Saul of Israel visiting a medium at En Dor on the night before his final battle is an anomaly in Scripture, relating the story of a "successful" seance. Richard Ritenbaugh dissects the text of I Samuel 28 to expose several common misconceptions about the events of that night.

Richard Ritenbaugh, reflecting on the movie the Gladiator, marveled at many references to the afterlife, observing that the notion of going to heaven has been borrowed from pagan notions of Nirvana, Valhalla, or Elysium. In this venue, they will be doing things there that they had not attained in this life, transferring earthly good times to a heavenly setting. Going to heaven is not scriptural. The soul is not immortal; it is equivalent to life. Mankind does not have a soul; he is a soul, subject to death. The soul that sins will die. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life when we go through the prescribed process. The body returns to dust, decomposed into its elements. As we reach our prime, we begin degenerating until we expire, turning back into dust. The term Sheol is equivalent to the dust, the grave, or the pit. The body goes back to the earth. There is no consciousness or awareness in death, but resembles a peaceful sleep in which we are "dead to the world." Just as one can be awakened from sleep, one can be resurrected to life. God has appointed specific times for the resurrections. The pathway through eternal life leads through the resurrection, with our following Jesus Christ. When we are resurrected at His coming, we will indeed have access to heaven, but we will join our Bridegroom as He rules on the Earth. The repentant thief expected to join Jesus Christ when He would come into His kingdom, a future event to occur on the earth. Jesus spoke this pronouncement emphatically—I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise. Because Jesus was in the grave for three days and three nights, He did not go to paradise the day He told that to the thief.

Richard Ritenbaugh tackles the question, "Do we contain an immortal soul?" The prevailing idea is that the soul is the indestructible part of a human being that lives on. The Hebrew word nephesh refers to a living being; the Latin word anima and the Greek word psyche refer to breath. In Leviticus 17, we learn that the life resides in the blood. A body is greater than a biochemical reaction; the life force comes from outside the body. Elihu observed that there is a spirit in man, giving him the ability to think and understand, giving him a point of contact with God, separating him from the animals. Paul differentiates the spirit in man from God's Holy Spirit, dividing a human being into spirit (mind), soul (our life), and body (flesh). Nominal Christianity has absorbed heaven, hell, and purgatory from Greek mythology and the philosophy of Plato, who propagated the doctrine of the immortal soul in his Phaedo. The idea of the immortality of the soul is nowhere in the Old Testament, unless one deliberately distorts the account of Enoch's translation and the witch of Endor. Genesis 2:16-17 affirms that it is possible to die, and Ezekiel 18:4 and 20 affirm that the soul (the life) that sins shall die. Galatians 3:22 indicates that all have sinned. Eternal life must come as a gift, but it is not something we have right now, except as an earnest payment. Hebrews 9:27 reminds us that we all die once. God keeps our human spirit in reserve for safe-keeping until the resurrection from the dead.

John Ritenbaugh studies into an understanding which strikes some individuals as "going beyond the scripture" or even blasphemous, namely that we will become literal offspring of the Eternal God, sharing His name and nature. Most of Christendom believes in the erroneous doctrine of the immortality of the soul, taught nowhere in scripture, but fueled by anecdotal reports of apparitions of deceased relatives. Sadly, human nature does not believe the scriptures. Although the Bible indeed teaches hope in life beyond the grave, it nowhere teaches of an inherent immortal soul. The wages of sin, something we all have committed is death (not a transition into another form of life); eternal life is a gift of God's grace, given at our calling as we yield our lives to Him, trusting in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in our future resurrection as taught by the Disciples at Pentecost. The witness of these disciples (who had seen His death and resurrection and willingly gave up their lives in martyrdom) has been preserved through the Holy Scriptures, a document more carefully preserved than any other document on earth. Other resurrections occurred before Christ's resurrection (Lazarus) and following the time of Christ's resurrection, providing a dramatic testimony to thousands of people. The Word of God provides factual evidence of life after death through a resurrection. All die at least once, and all are resurrected at least once. Our creation as physical human beings as well as the creation of the angels was a fiat process. What God is doing in us now, in reproducing Himself as offspring composed of His Holy Spirit, is creating by means of a cooperative time- and experience-consuming process, working between the creator and the created in devotion to a common cause- to become joint heirs with Christ as God's offspring. In this process, we walk in the spirit, subjugating and putting to death our carnal impulses. As we follow the prompts of God's Holy Spirit, we walk toward eternal life, taking on God's nature,

When Satan confronted humanity's first parents, Adam and Eve, he fed them three heresies that he continues to promote to deceive the world today. David Grabbe expounds on these three lies, revealing how Gnosticism incorporated them into its parasitic philosophy and way of life.

Following the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse is the Fifth Seal, depicting souls under the altar crying out to God for vengeance. Richard Ritenbaugh goes into the details of this prophecy of persecution and martyrdom of the saints.

Do you realize not one in a hundred knows what salvation is—how to get it—when you will receive it? Don't be too sure you do! Here, once for all, is the truth made so plain you will really understand it!

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